Texas Textbook Controversy

During the twentieth century, Texans struggled to maintain acceptable funds for public education. Schools were short on funds, leading them to be short on school supplies, and textbooks. In 1949, the state legislature passed three bills to help with this issue. These bills also helped reconstruct the public education in Texas. These bills were known as the Gilmer-Aikin Laws. They helped raise teacher’s salaries regardless of race or sex, established minimum standards for teacher training, and mandated a nine-month academic year for students. (Erekson

The education conflict in Texas is a major factor of chaos. There is kids without college tuitions. The 2011 Texas Legislature chopped more than a billion dollars from higher education, dashing the dream of college for many Texas students. While scholarships disappeared, many campuses were forced to raise tuition costs, a deadly combination for families without the resources to make up the difference.

The Texas Constitution guarantees an "efficient system of public free schools," but schools have recently found themselves unable to provide an adequate education to the more than 5 million students in Texas because of the many problems within the education policy in the state. Such issues involve school financing, lack of preparation for college, early childhood education, teacher quality, and school choice. Tough all of these conflicts pose a potential threat to the school system’s competence and effectiveness as well as to Texas’ economy, there are a broad number of possible adjustment and reforms that could be placed to improve the adequacy of Texas’ school system.

The current state of the Texas education policy is very complex and its roots can be traced all the way back to times were there was no equality in the public school system, we can even say it can be traced as far back to the state’s split from Mexico. This was a very problematic situation that began to be reformed heavily starting in 1954. The legislations that passed to resolve this problem have morphed the Texas Public education policy into what it is today.

Many schools are taking books out of their curriculum because of the harsh and uncomfortable language and topics. The Biloxi School District had taken To Kill A Mockingbird out of their classrooms and Drake High School had even burned all copies of Slaughterhouse -Five. It is wrong that schools began taking books like that from their lesson plan because students should not be oblivious to these kinds of topics and it is sending the wrong message about the authors and their books.

Texas has always been a very conservative state that focuses on protecting the freedoms given by the constitution to the people. However, there are some freedoms that have certainly been challenged as time passes by. This is where the limited government of Texas usually has conflicts with the constantly growing federal government, especially during the last decades when some big problems and controversies erupted, particularly on the issues of mass shootings and gun control. When it comes to gun control laws, opinions are unequivocally divided between republicans and democrats. Republicans venerate and sharply defend the Second Amendment of the Constitution as right of the people to defend themselves, while Democrats yell desperately for gun restriction laws and even a change to the Second Amendment, these with the purpose of getting guns out of the streets and preventing other mass shootings.

The article "How Texas Inflicts Bad Textbooks on Us", written by Gail Collins, gives some of the reason why texas textbooks are full of biased and the reason why many of this textbooks should be revised in schools before using them. For example, extremenly rich people have been an influence in the way that books are written, putting I believe their own personal views and perspectives. The article gives references to James Leininger, as San Antonio physician promoted a campaign in 1994 by emailing "flyers to voters's homes in one district showing a black man kissing a white man and claiming that the democratic incumbent had voted for textbooks that promoted homosexuality". This was just an example of the many objections about the textbook materials, one of them was the concern that they were teaching children more

No one would had imagined a woman governing over Texas, a state ruled by conservative white cowboys. Ann Richards was the second woman to become the Lieutenant Governor of Texas in 1990. She became the hero of minorities, woman, gay men, and lesbians, and worked for a “New Texas” where opportunities and power would be given to those groups. Ann Richards is known as the most efficient person in a line of long Texas progressives who fought for control over Texas when the state was a “Democratic Stronghold”. Her loss against Gorge W. Bush after her first term as governor, was a strong indication that the generations of Democrats ruling Texas had ended.

The state of Texas has grudge against authority. In fact, there’s general distrust against the government. Texas constantly limits the governor’s power, which makes him one of the weakest governors compared to other states. The plural executive system of Texas takes away power from the Governor. However, this doesn’t detain the governor from playing a vital legislative role.

Dean’s argument lies on the foundation that Texans want change, and they want it now. For the past 20 years, things in Texas have stayed pretty consistent due to having a majority of Conservative Republicans in high office, but consistency is not necessarily a good thing. Texas has the lowest graduation rate of high school compared to every other state in country and also has

This article, "What Do Test Scores In Texas Tell US?" by the Rand Corporation looks at the pros and cons to high stakes testing in Texas. High stakes testing was meant to improve academic scores and motivate teachers, but unintended concerns have risen. Professionals and the media question exactly how beneficial these test are, and if we should continue to use them. Texas was looked at because students had made huge strides in statewide testing. "Gains in Texas Assessment and Academic Skills (TAAS) reading and math scores for both majority and minority have been so dramatic that they have dubbed the 'Texas Miracle '" (Rand, 2000). The success was so great that Texas students were put through further test to validate that these impressive scores. Students tested on the National Assessment of Educational Process (NAEP) between 1994 and 1998. After comparing the scores for TAAS to the scores of NAEP many questions arose for the validity of statewide testing. Tables in the article show that the TAAS scores are differ greatly than those of the NAEP. Though the scores between the two test were much different Texas students who took the NAEP were higher than the U.S. average. Also, by 1998 the gap between the scores of white students and students of color got smaller. Questions about why the gap between the TAAS scores and the NAEP scores were so great were never directly answered. Suggestions were made that Texas teachers could more easily prepare students for the

By the mid-1990s, the Republican Party has become the dominant party of Texas. “Republicans continued to erode – if unevenly – the Democratic Party's dominance of state politics over succeeding years, as this chapter's feature on The Rise of the Republican South illustrates. The Republican Party reached a summit of sorts in 1998, when it won all 27 state-wide offices. Just two years earlier in 1996, Republicans won control of the Texas Senate with a slim majority (17 of 31 seats) and have held control in subsequent elections.” (n, d) Gov. Rick Perry (Rick Perry) was held a special session of the legislature in the summer of 2003, which led the final democratic unity broke. As well as a new map passed, and seemed to give Republican candidates an opportunity to get up to seven more seats. Thus, it was the last step for the rise of the Republican Party in Texas

More than 600 Texas school districts were left disappointed and confounded with the recent ruling of the Texas Supreme Court, which upheld the state’s public school funding system as constitutional, while also advising state legislature that the system is indeed flawed and in need of thorough reformation.

Over the years, there has been an issue I Texas, but the main issue that has been going around is education in the public school’s system. In the pubic schools of Texas there are many problems that a student faces. The three main reasons are that some teachers don’t know how to speak English properly, some kids from private schools go to public schools, and finally there is no push from the teachers to help the students. These are the issues in which some students drop out or just do not try. In some schools in the state of Texas there are many types of teachers that could be from others countries or different background and that is ok, but if they don’t know to speak English properly then it ill be hard for the student to understand the teacher

The TSTA is one of the most influential interest groups that has influenced governmental operations by controlling amendments of laws associated with education. An article by article by Irving Owen Dawson “The Texas State Teachers Association and the Amendment 4 Campaign,” gives a